'Truth spoken without moderation reverses itself'
This blog is a source for intellectual exploration. It includes a list of alternative resources and a source of free books. The placement of an article does not imply that I agree with it, merely that I found it thought-provoking. There are also poems and book reviews. Texts written by me are labelled. Readers are free to re-post anything they like.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

The loudspeakers in the vicinity were alternating between
anti-government slogans and revolutionary songs. These songs described the pain
of the loss of the cotton crop or white gold, the manner in which loans were
recovered, the 97 farmer suicides that have taken place in Punjab between May
and August this year and the proliferation of drug use in the region. Speaker
after speaker took the stage, exhorting the protesters to remember the stories
of Bhagat Singh, Kartar Singh Sarabha and Udham Singh from the freedom
movement, as they drew parallels between their struggle against British
imperialism and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s failed Land Bill. Amidst the
warnings against corporate imperialism, they also relayed instances of Sikh
saints and warriors such as Guru Gobind Singh and Banda Bahadur, who fought
against injustice. They asked the protestors to fight through non-violence this
time, strive for peaceful agitation, and to not do anything that would give the
government and police a chance to clamp down upon the agitation

On 10 October 2015, the fourth day of the rail roko—stop the trains—at Pathrala village,
near Dabwali Mandi, in Punjab, the organisers of the joint farmer-labour
protest mistook me for a Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Agent. Given
the extreme vigil with which the organisers have guarded the agitation, not
allowing it to be appropriated by any political party, even rejecting regular
party leaders from taking the stage, such suspicion towards me was completely
in keeping with the aim and method of the agitation which hopes to benefit more
than 2 lakh families in the state.

The protest, which has farmers squatting on
railway tracks to prevent trains from plying began on the afternoon of 7
October. Their demand is for just compensation for the failed cotton crops, remunerative
rates for basmati crops, the payments of sugarcane dues owed by private mills,
and debt relief. To this end, the protestors had urged for a meeting with
Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, tentatively scheduled for yesterday
at 5 pm. However, the talks that were held ended in a stalemate with neither
side budging.

Dressed in a shirt and cargo pants, notebook in hand, I
looked very urban to the thousands of rural men, women, elderly and children
who were lying on rail tracks under white tents amidst the joint flag of eight
Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) factions and seven different Mazdoor organisations.
The small and medium land owners among the Jats, the Dalits and other lower
castes are fighting this battle together, Lachhman Sewewala, the state
secretary for the Punjab Khet Mazdoor Union told me: “It is wrong to consider
farming as only a Jat occupation. A farmer is not a caste. To me, a farmer is
one who derives their living from farming, with land or without land.” he said.
He went on to point out that small farmers and landless labourers deal with
much the same issues as any other farmers, that include employment, price rise,
sustainable agriculture, loans and recovery and suicides. “The expenses on
agriculture have increased, the profits have decreased. The labour’s sustenance
from land and their relationship with it has reduced. We no longer get fodder
for cattle, straws for cooking fires, even vegetables and so on.”

He went on to
state that the farmer and the labour suffered under these obstacles, and that
is why they had all come together. People have come from all across the state
irrespective of the political party in power in their area: Shergad and Rampura
in Bathinda district are represented in the parliament by Union minister for Food
Processing, Harsimrat Kaur Badal from the Shiromani Akali Dal; the Sangrur
district is represented by Bhagwant Mann from the Aam Aadmi Party. Amritsar is
represented by Amarinder Singh of the Congress.

The loudspeakers in the vicinity were alternating between
anti-government slogans and revolutionary songs. These songs described the pain
of the loss of the cotton crop or white gold, the manner in which loans were
recovered, the 97 farmer suicides that have taken place in
Punjab between May and August this year and the proliferation of drug use in
the region. Speaker after speaker took the stage, exhorting the
protesters to remember the stories of Bhagat Singh, Kartar Singh Sarabha and
Udham Singh from the freedom movement, as they drew parallels between their
struggle against British imperialism and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s failed
Land Bill. Amidst the warnings against corporate imperialism, they also relayed
instances of Sikh saints and warriors such as Guru Gobind Singh and Banda
Bahadur, who fought against injustice. They asked the protestors to fight
through non-violence this time, strive for peaceful agitation, and to not do anything
that would give the government and police a chance to clamp down upon the
agitation.

It was only as I arrived that I realised that by taking the
bus to the venue I had avoided the police barriers that had been erected to
prevent people from reaching the site. I had called one of the organisers ten
minutes prior to reaching and had been asked to alight near a statue, at an old
and now unused bus stop. As I stepped down from the bus, I saw 22-year-old
Gurpreet Singh, who had been sent to fetch me on his motorbike. As we made our
way to the location, I noticed the police standing a distance away. Once I
reached, I realised that several protestors had come to the venue by navigating
through paths in the field and other roundabout routes.

A day before this demonstration, the police had arrested protestors who were coming
from the nearby villages of Khudian and Faridkot Kotli to Pathrala. These
protestors were released after a few hours, a technique that is being used
across all other seven sites of the protest. The loss from the stoppage of over 850 trains, their
subsequent cancellation and diversion to other routes has cost the railways upwards of Rs 100 crore until now, and is also
affecting the sale of hosiery and iron good among others as their stocks are
piling up. The last sustained rail roko in Punjab was in 2000 and had lasted 72
hours. This one that is underway right now has long since crossed that, having
already exceeded seven days. “Will the Railways impose the loss on the Punjab
government?” Gurpeet asked me as we drove, “They will pay everybody else, but
not us.”...Read more: http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/stormed-citadels-badal-rail-roko-punjab